Pew Charitable Trusts, which spent a year studying the state’s opioid treatment system, offered recommendations to a state task force. Among them was the suggestion for a pilot program that would offer medication-assisted treatment in at least one prison or one jail.

Rhode Island has such a program that led to a 61 percent decrease in overdose deaths among recently incarcerated people and a 12 percent decrease in overdose deaths statewide.

Pew consultants also recommended that the state:

—-Expand opioid treatment programs. The state has too few providers offering methadone treatment.

—–Develop a legal definition for recovery housing that would bar discrimination against those using methadone treatment, and

——Fund an expansion of buprenorphine training for providers during training programs for doctors and other medical professionals.

UPDATE: Click here to read an article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about a pioneering program in the Dane County Jail to treat substance abuse.